LOS Angeles County supervisors decided, rightly, last month that
their government was lacking accountability. So they created a system
that would make someone accountable once and for all -- just not them.

That someone is the new county CEO, a bureaucratic muckety-muck who
will make up to $399,000 a year in a position temporarily filled by the
county's retired top administrator, David Janssen. The new CEO,
still to be named, will get five deputy muckety-mucks to boss around,
and the buck, as it were, will stop with the whole collective bunch.

The plan -- despite letting the supervisors off the hook and tying
up more taxpayer money in payroll -- is, on balance, a good one. Someone
in the county needs to have the power and responsibility to bring order
to the county government, since the supervisors won't.

But open-government advocates have raised a valid concern.

Under the old regime, in which the supervisors made all the
decisions, the public was guaranteed some knowledge of what was going
on. That's because the supes are subject to the state's Brown
Act, which requires elected officials' meetings to be open to the
public.

But a CEO isn't an elected official. Nor are deputy
muckety-mucks. They're bureaucrats. Bureaucrats can get together
whenever they want, without telling anyone, and without being open to
the public.

And a lack of public scrutiny tends to lead to increased
corruption.

The supes assure us this is not a problem. They even got the county
counsel to draw up a report explaining exactly how the CEO will be
subject to public scrutiny.

There's just one problem: The report's been marked
"confidential," so none of us can see it.

How's that for open government?

The counsel explains that this is just standard process,
attorney-client privilege and whatnot. But the "clients" in
this case -- our supervisors -- have the right to waive that privilege.
They also have a moral obligation to let the public know what
they're up to.

This is especially true because the supes will be evaluating the
counsel's report for the next two weeks, before voting on a package
of openness requirements for the CEO-ocracy.

The public deserves to see the report that will be the basis of
their decision. And the supes' willingness to disclose the report
will be a good measure of how serious -- or not -- they are about
keeping county government honest.

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